One of my cousins mentioned “Curry Pubs” in England which served Indian food in a pub setting. I really like that idea and have been kicking around the idea of opening one in the US. Is the term “Curry Pub” used in the UK? What does a typical menu look like? Do they look like your typical English pub inside?
I assume they’re just like any other pub. Here, in Canada, most pubs serve some sort of curry dish, along with other pub fare and chicken wings etc.
I used to go to curry pubs in Coventry. They were just like a regular boozer, but had been bought up by a gentleman (Bangledeshi I believe) who had previously owned Balti restaurants, and realized that his customers were all coming from the pub. So he combined the concept. It’s a while back, but they seemed pretty much identical to an average Coventry pub, but with an exclusively Indian menu. The menu was pretty similar to that in a standard restaurant, though a little smaller in the number of options.
Maybe you should consider opening a take-out curry place first just to see if that type of cuisine would be popular as fast-food here in the states. Opening a curry pub would mean having to get a liquor license and entail some other restrictions and expenses that would add to your cost as a fledgling business owner.
And speaking of Balti, is that exclusively a north of England phenomenon? I mentioned Balti to my Indian friends in the US and they looked at me blankly.
Coventry is hardly the north of England - it’s pretty much the definition of Midlands. And that is where balti took off in the UK, starting in Birmingham then spreading through the West Midlands Conurbation.
I have not seen Balti places in London, but I never hung out much in London after the whole Balti fad took off.
I’ve lived in Coventry and London, and while Indian places in the capital are pretty much more general, there’s a good few Balti takeouts.
You’d probably get one or two curry dishes in any pub which advertises itself as doing food (in a big town, anyway, not so much the more rural areas). Often they’ll do lasagne as well, alongside the more traditional fish and chips or a steak and ale pie.
I think Balti’s originally from Pakistan, so your Indian friends might well not know of it.
Even within India, a lot of the cuisine’s very regional.
I would define “balti” as a style of restaurants found originally in the West Midlands of the U.K. run by immigrants from Pakistan:
I gather that no one in Pakistan would use the term Balti restaurant. The term “balti” is a word for a particular type of bowl in which the food is cooked. Living in England from 1987 to 1990 I don’t think I ever heard the term. I only started hearing it in reports from England about 1992.
If this is about opening a ‘curry pub’ (I hate the term myself) in a location where neither pubs nor curries are commonplace seems to be a venture with two unknowns, not one. If there’s an established culture of pubs/bars with an informal relaxed athmosphere, then fine. Similarly if there’s either a demonstrable local appetite for the food or evidence of ethnically-diverse or unfamiliar cuisine already succeeding. If neither of these exist, then it might be a very difficult thing to market.
Portland Oregon has lots of pubs that serve hamburgers, pizza, BBQ, etc. It also has a fair number of Indian restaurants (but nothing like the take-out curry places in England). I’m more worried about the idea of people associating Indian food with beer and pubs.
The Pub/Ethnic Food combo is something that’s been taking off more in recent years and, when it works, its rather good - i like it.
The Nelson’s Retreat on Old Street in London is a good example - very old-school boozer with a kitchen that’s run by a thai couple. The food is brilliant.
Not seen too many curry pubs tbh. As noted every gastro pub will have a curry on the menu, which 99 times out of 100 will be ropey, but an alehouse that dishes up a complete and authentic curry-house menu? Is that common in London, midlands etc? I live in Edinburgh and have not seen one.
The US curry house is a completely different proposition to the UK in any case. I was in one last month in Philadephia and asked for a lamb Madras, blank looks all round. Got offered a ‘lamb curry’. Very poor indeed - both the dish and the failure to offer the King of curries on the menu. It revealed a rudimentary understanding of the curry concept, something I’ve seen previously when going to curry houses in the US.
I can’t say I’ve heard the term ‘curry pub’ before, and I already dislike it. I’ve had mediocre curries in pubs which do food, but then most Indian restaurants are so geared towards the drinker - with draught beer and tolerant waiting staff - that they seem near enough ‘curry pubs’ as they are.
I also have never heard the term in neither Edinburgh nor the North West. Plenty of pubs run “curry clubs”, though, serving curries fit for only for the consumption of drunkards.
I suppose I’d associate it with London, it’s certainly not something to be found around here! I’m not at all familiar with the Midlands, so might be ignorant of that aspect.
It’s ‘fairly’ common in the Midlands (Birmingham/Coventry). Quite often a landlord will outsource the catering to an Indian/Pakistani family, so the food is exactly what you’d get in a normal curry house. In London, I haven’t come across one yet, but have come across MANY pubs that do the same but with Thai food.
I haven’t come across the term ‘curry pub’ though.
BTW, on the balti thing, it’s originally a Birmingham phenomenon that has spread (invented by Pakistani immigrants - like Tikka Masala - but not something you’d find in Pakistan, apparently). You do get balti’s offered down in London, but nothing on the scale of what you’ll find in the Midlands.
Busy Scissors writes:
> The US curry house is a completely different proposition to the UK in any case. I
> was in one last month in Philadephia and asked for a lamb Madras, blank looks
> all round. Got offered a ‘lamb curry’. Very poor indeed - both the dish and the
> failure to offer the King of curries on the menu. It revealed a rudimentary
> understanding of the curry concept, something I’ve seen previously when going
> to curry houses in the US.
First, I’d be surprised if an Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/whatever restaurant in the U.S. called itself a curry house. Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/whatever restaurants hold an entirely different position in the U.S. than in the U.K. In the U.S. they’re just another among a variety of ethnic restaurants, no different than the Thai restaurant next door, the Italian restaurant across the street, or the Ethiopian place down the street. In the U.K. they are the prime ethnic restaurant and generally the main place open late at night.
Second, I’ve certainly seen Madras dishes on the menu in many Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/whatever restaurants in the U.S. I don’t know why the place you went into didn’t happen to have it. It says nothing about the average Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/whatever restaurant in the U.S., just about the particular restaurant you went to. Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/whatever restaurants vary quite a bit in the styles of food they do. It’s possible that the place you went into did a particular style of food that didn’t happen to include Madras dishes.
Third, it’s possible that the real problem was that the restaurant only did one lamb dish. You should remember that lamb is a noticeably rarer meal in the U.S. than in the U.K. That’s true over all sorts of restaurants and in home cooking. I don’t know why exactly that’s true, but it is.
And yet it’s a vastly common meat used in indian/pakistani/bengali cooking, just about the only one that crosses religious boundaries (excluding hindu vegetarians here, obviously).
I started eating balti’s - specifically eating in ‘balti houses’ - in the mid/late-80s. But then I’m from Birmingham originally. It didn’t spread darn sarf until considerably later.
A restaurant in the ‘Balti Triangle’ in Birmingham call Adil’s claims to have invented it - they opened in the late 70s.